1890 CH with 28" Bernard barrels
 

I've been sort of lurking about here for a bit over four years now... I don't post much, but read alot instead. During this period, I've been working on the CH that I got from my father about 15 years ago.

http://parkerguns.org/forums/picture...pictureid=8694

The entire life of this gun was in Rochester, NY, until 1970 when my father was transferred with Kodak down to East Tennessee, where their chemical plant was located.

Dad got the gun in 1960 for $50 from an old Army buddy named Bill Nolan, also of Rochester. Shortly after his return from WWII European where he had served an Army Hospital Administrator, he got the gun from someone he knew from his civilian occupation as an insurance salesman. "Uncle Bill" and my father were very close; we spent many Saturdays as a kids at his home, playing with his nickel slots, and his HUGE coin collection, while the parents played poker, shot muskets and other guns off the back porch at paper plates on Aunt Elsie's clothes line, etc. After nearly a decade of badgering, in 1970 he finally agreed to sell my father the broken Parker he had picked up in the mid 40's.

The small of the grips had been broken, probably when an earlier owner had fallen on it. During the whole time Bill Nolan had the gun, it stayed in his basement gun storage area, untouched. My father kept it in the back of his closet from 1970 until he passed it on to me around 2000.

Unless the metal had been redone sometime before WWII by someone other than the factory, which I rather doubt, all case color is factory original. The barrel bores are literally mirrors; no striations or markings of any kind, and no pitting, either.

As I said, the stock had been broken before WWII, and the repair, which was well done, had begun to fail shortly after I got the gun, probably because of the many moves I had, with resulting environmental changes of dry / humid / dry.

Around 2006 or 2007 I got on this website, and sought advice of a good stock man in my area, which at the time was Tallahassee. A guy up in Athens was nominated, and the repair was subsequently accomplished. Unfortunately, that repair job was to fail also, this time only after three years.

So, this gun spent three long years at Dennis' place in Oregon, and this summer was finally completed and went to Turnbull's have some of the screws addressed, as they had been buggered.

It got back to me, finally, a few weeks ago, and here I've posted a bunch of pictures for your evaluation. I'd like to hear from the experts what you really think.

Here's the pertinent dope from it's Letter, which I finally got around to ordering in September.

very nice- wish it were still here to look at


BTW- this makes me feel like "Researcher" :rotf::rotf::rotf:

from 1884 city directory

http://parkerguns.org/forums/picture...pictureid=8698

All I can say is WOW! Beautiful gun.

IMO the case colors are factory. If Turnbull did the floor plate screws, I'd ask for my money back. Other than that, it''s a wonderful Parker!

Beautiful!!

What a treasure with a wonderful family history.

John, is this the gun I surveyed and appraised for you years ago? (We met in the NRA HQ cafeteria over coffee, as I recall). Thanks, Kevin

Kevin, yes, it's one and the same. Several members here have seen it: Dennis had it at the Southern this summer, and years ago three from Southern Georgia had a lunch with me, too.

Am I mistaken or are those Bernard barrels?

I find it interesting that the makers matk is hand engraved. Since other Bernard barrels have been observed as rolled.

Is there anything different about the text? Like a custom inscription?

The only other hand engraved bernard barrel i have seen was where it was order with "made for..." before the Parker name.

There were about 480 C Bernards made, almost all 2 frame 30" 12s. There are a few 16s and 20s made. Light 28" 12s are uncommon. I suppose this is on a 1 frame, perhaps 1 1/2.

Nice gun, nice condition.

Here's two cell phone shots that cover all the text.

The camera I used for the other pics doesn't do well close up.

Bruce, it is a 1 frame. The stamp on the lug is VERY light, almost invisible. Bad picture here, the focus is an inch lower down on the barrel flats, but you can barely make out the 1.

http://parkerguns.org/forums/picture...pictureid=8679

Great story and great gun.

Fantastic C grade and a family gun also. I concur that the CC is Parker. Any C grade Bernard is a treasure and this one especially so
David

Wonderful gun!

Yes, and a lot of provenance to boot, congrats on bringing her back, Gary

I thought so - I am SO glad you decided to have the stock work done, especially by Dennis - what a wonderful gun!

THAT is a wonderful gun. Thanks for sharing it with us!

I'm not finding any further information on Jas. McCulloch, the owner of the gunstore who made the original order with Parker, but there is a lot of info on the 2nd owner, Rufus K. Dryer, who sent it back to the factory to have the chokes opened up...

Rufus was a very prominent banker in Rochester, and an avid yachtsman / outdoorsman. He died in 1937, aged 91, and was survived by his son Joseph, who was a bond dealer, also in Rochester.

Joseph had a son, also named Joe, who went to Dartmouth in 1940. There he became friends with Jack Hemmingway, son of the author. They joined the Bait & Bullet club, and shared the two arms that Jack had brought with him to school, a Winchester Model 12 SN # 600296, and a Remington pump-action Model 14 rifle in .44 cal, SN # 96674. The shotgun had been a gift from his father, but the rifle had come from a gunrunner friend in Florida.

Jack quit Dartmouth to join the Army in '43, leaving the two guns with Joe, who stayed to graduate. Joe then became a 90-day wonder Lieutenant in the Marines, and was wounded on the first wave at Iwo Jima by a sniper's bullet to the chest. He recovered after a year in the hospital.

A few years later he moved to Cuba where he and his brother had purchased some land, and there he had the occasion to meet his old schoolmate's father, Earnest. Joe told the tale of his knowing Jack, and that he was still in possession of the two guns, which Earnest never bothered to retrieve; they are reportedly still in the Dryer family.

While the broken Parker likely never came out of his grandfather's or his father's closet to have any association with a Hemmingway, I'm pretty sure that it would have been Joe, the USMC Lieutenant Purple Heart recipient who would have sold the shotgun to Uncle Bill. They were about the same age, and were both WWII veterans living in the same town. Who knows, perhaps they met at a smoky VFW hall, or at one of the clubs shooting clays. We'll never likely know, but I'm for one sure glad they did meet.

I got the data on the second Joe from two sources, a newspaper bio on Joe, and this book: Hemingway's Guns: The Sporting Arms of Ernest Hemingway

In the cell phone pictures you posted of the engraved legend on the top rib there are some 'inconsistencies' in the matting that cause me to wonder if they may have engraved the matting, at least the matting beneath the the legend.





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Dean, It's your expert eyes that had me posting all those pics, to be able to get the "whole picture," so to speak.

Are you talking about the chevrons below the engraved text? By inconsistencies, do you mean that the matting isn't exactly symmetrical? Should it be?

Those two pics, shot with a cellphone camera, were lighted by my super-bright Sheriff's Deputy's flashlight, held close and at a low oblique, to eliminate reflection but still allow the camera to see the lettering. Should I get some more of the whole rib?

The matting looks perfectly normal to me. Some Inconsistencies are commonly seen in matting since each line was cut mechanically one at a time.

Nonetheless, they may or may not have been done by machine and to my eye some appear to have been engraved. Typically the matting was done by machine and I have not seen matting with that kind of inconsistencies that had been done by machine.


"Always" and "never" are two words we shy away from when discussing Parkers.


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Always and never are to words I try to shy away from, because Murphy likes me quite a lot for some reason.

So, the rib looks 95% normal with some small inconsistencies and the concusion is that it was hand cut? Wow. Thats a pretty big leap.

Without getting into a umm, 'contest'... The machine that cut the individual matting lines incorporated a 'track' that the cutter followed so that each wavy line would exactly replicate the one next to it. The "inconsistencies" I see are in some of those lines NOT being exactly the same as the line next to it - that's all I have to say on the matter.





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Hey Dean

Not to get into this fracas about what you see or do not see, I can only say that DISTORTION is a function of the lens curvature ( my early photographic mapping days) ----I am sure cell phones do not have the best glass to create a lens.

Just my view on the matter.

Allan

Being a lifelong resident of Rochester NY I would love to own a gun from my hometown. Beautiful Parker thanks for sharing.

CL, born in Strong Memorial, lived in Greece, next to Greece Olympia HS.

Czar grew up in West Irondequoit, attended RIT and live in Fairport.

My wife claims to be part Cherokee. Her Great-Great Grandmother was "Pokajuia" who was Geronimo's winter squaw. She had no fixed address. Quite the rambler, she was.